Karla Harris – Atlanta Magazine

Photography by Martha Williams

“My parents had a lot of very eclectic albums and I listened to them on Saturdays after doing chores, sometimes putting on shows for an imaginary audience,” says Karla Harris. His favorites? Jazz greats like Nancy Wilson and Billie Holiday. While attending the University of Missouri-St. Louis, her love for the genre expanded when she began singing with renowned local groups like the Gateway Jazz Ensemble and the St. Louis Jazz Quartet. Then her mentor, singer Jeanne Trevor, introduced her to arts education programs like Young Audiences, Inc. “It was a nice situation because it combined two things I love: jazz and artistic awareness of children, many in schools and underserved neighborhoods,” she said. It was the beginning of her decades-long career, not only as a performer and recording artist with a leading reputation at some of the country’s most notable venues and festivals, but also as an educator ensuring ensuring that future generations have access to the arts.

Since moving to Atlanta in 2012, she has helped launch a half-day interactive jazz camp and Jazz Discovery series for school children at the Callanwolde Fine Arts Center, where she performs regularly as part of the Jazz on the Lawn summer concert series. She is also a professor of vocal jazz and artist-in-residence at Kennesaw State University, where she teaches and mentors emerging jazz singers.

“Jazz is a uniquely American activity, but its audience is very small compared to other types of music,” she says. Regarding the value of arts education, she adds: “It seems intimidating to some people because we don’t grow up understanding it. It’s not just understanding music that’s important to me. There are general skills you learn with music, and jazz in particular, like collaboration, communication, and mutual respect. The values ​​of jazz are the same ones we value as a society and as a democracy.

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